SILENT IMAGE AND LOGOS
Francesco Pititto
The Apocalypse of John, or other visionary, is a roar of images. A roar and a crash mixed with lightning and thunder in a dark and dazzling sky at the same time, from which protean figures emerge, shape-shifters full of symbols and destructive powers, bearers of catastrophic punishments and great magnificent prophetic apparitions such as the Woman dressed in the sun, with the moon under your feet and on your head a crown of twelve stars.
The two pillars of dramaturgy, however, address in particular the question of quantity understood as the sum of individuals united by a prophetic mission –between conquest and promised land – and that of water, a vital element in achieving divine and human goals, in conscious and unconscious representation of this element. The battlefield of the imagination is as wide as the universe, the seismic rumble that overwhelms every boundary of reality reaches the pinnacle of a concert of light and darkness where everything seems to stop, the mutant forms and the space around, in unison with the astonishing electromagnetic waves.
Then the Lamb comes, and time stands still, as on the event horizon. The lamb has human eyes and looks at us, teaches us, imprinting makes the other roar of images that are our present, raw real and true, flow fast within us.
The vision belongs to us because it is what we see, live, and which outlines our apocalypse revealing and revealing our internal and external cataclysm, our being thrown into the world and the very world in which we live for an insignificant time, a spark.
The sacred is an image from the beginning, I think that every religion has an image at its origin, even those that do not contemplate the human figure or the face compose signs and scriptures, build temples and sacred places with grandiose forms that even before being frequented have the purpose of being imagined, narrated, visited first by faith and then by the incessant pilgrim wandering of every human being.
At least once in a lifetime it is said for some believers, but in the meantime the image has already been formed in body and soul, perhaps through different shapes and colors, different visions. The image is sacred and profane at the same time, in our Apocalypse the imagoturgy relates to the existing space reconstructed for action, imprints Renaissance and contemporary figurative echoes on the walls, the Lamb of God is among the grazing lambs, he is among the children and storks of the Dandora landfill, among the resistant and wandering shepherds between mountains and valleys, in perennial transhumance between nature and poetry.
The rotating dome of the Correggio di San Giovanni Evangelista caresses the ferrocement vault by Pierluigi Nervi and inhabits the dome of the Fabbrica, a place of workers' work and human affairs, effort and sacrifice. The action, the voice, the live singing and the image act as a bridge between those who participate in the ritual and those who perform the ritual, together again with the scapegoat, the Dionysian.
The imagoturgy of this Apocalypse enters into a relationship with the interior spaces of the large industrial complex, the composition is realized through different modes of realization: the superimposition of several images, in particular – the dome of Correggio of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma - documentary footage of lambs and sheep grazing, live footage of the apocalyptic landfill in Nairobi – they give a multi-layered visual form, in a choral ensemble movement.
The overlay was widely used by film authors in the years ’20 and following with the first experiments in surrealism and visual futurism, such as the eyes twirling with desire in the sequence of Maria's Dance, Brigitte Helm as lascivious Babylon, in Metropolis (Apocalyptic) by Fritz Lang, then later – I remember the wonderful Dalinian eyes in the hypnotic dream of “I will save you” by Hitchcock – it became increasingly refined stylistic practice, as did optical illusion.
In the Hall of Busts, the head of the mystical Lamb of the Ghent altar, in van Eyck's Polyptych, will appear in very slow cross-fading before and after the famous, much-disputed restoration. The eyes of the Lamb, previously almost invisible and lateral, resurface frontal and almost human.
From the terror of the speechless animal we return to the word that lives, to the Logos.
SEPARATION AND MARRIAGE IN THE APOCALYPSE
Maria Federica Maestri
The installation composition of this Apocalypse is the result of an aesthetic act of revelation, the primary meaning of αποκάλυψη, and must originate from a separative artistic action.
I
Lift the veil and separate the hidden things from the opaque wrapping that wraps them.
Be full of eyes in front and behind.
II
Putting eye drops to see the physical extent of the sacred where it does not appear: the Factory is the architectural body where mechanical sacrifices have been made.
III
Measure the new Temple and steal structural elements from the nearby abbey dedicated to the trembling witness – the Evangelist John.
IV
Extract from the formally convenient and regulated cult building, the vertical volumes – the pillars - and expand them fractured and separated in the stage surface of the new one
City-Bride-Worker.
IV
Detach the Mannerist eagle from the marble facade and move the bleached bird of prey to the Pavilion
of infinite repetition.
VI
Dissolve the seal of the book in the frozen tabernacle - in the mouth as sweet as honey and in the bitter bowels.
VII
Crown the vault with visions of sacrificed Lambs, of bitter waters, of ‘woe’, of elderly spirits and shouting like lions.
VIII
The path is dotted with visual scourges, multitudes of crying sheep, gardeners of poverty, waste-exterminating birds.
IX
In the passage: seductive idols, cemented signals in vulgar replication of powers and glories of the past, a furnishing Babylon for monetarists drunk on wealth.
X
The frontal assaults made by the Beast-beauty, white and dying, untamed by the advent of the Righteous without the mark of harmony, delay the last revelation.
XI
Opening of the bento box for the large banquet.
XII
Have the right to the pulley – tree of life.
XIII
The final vision of the mechanical chariot, celestial mathematics suspending the weightless and headless pillars,
and the ascent to the golden tabernacle.
XIV
Vision of the new city where the doors will never close and there will be no more night.
